The Last Resortby Jan CarsonDoubleday IrelandThe Last Resort has Jan Carson’s hallmark combination of pithy Northern-Irish wit, profoundly imagined characters, spiced with the off-kilter and deliciously mad. Everyone has lost something in Antrim’s SeaCliff Caravan Park, which is past its glory days. These stories gleam alone or can be read in sequence to experience a whole vision: a work of great empathy and imagination. In a translator’s note, he compares MacGrianna’s work with George Orwell’s, no doubt for its sharp-eyed observations and acerbic commentary. Shah writes lyrically and convincingly about the interior lives of her characters, and realities they now face.

Source: The Irish Times May 07, 2021 22:52 UTC